


The day's vanity, the night's remorse

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Time War Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've been told that before, said the man. That were all a dream, and soon the alarm will ring and the dreamer will awake, and where will we go? Does anything we do matter then, if this is all a dream?  Doctor Who/Lotr crossover</p>
            </blockquote>





	The day's vanity, the night's remorse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for GM_Andy in an lj crossover meme. The title comes from a line in the poem "The Choice" by William Butler Yeats
> 
> * * *

  
Outside, the sky crackled.

Sam had pulled Frodo into a narrow hollow under a chunk of greasy igneous rock and ordered his companion to sleep. Frodo had protested, and been over ruled —

“With all respect you’ll collapse if you go any further Mr. Frodo. I’ll stand watch outside and wake you up quick if anything nasty comes 'round.”

Other objections had been similarly pushed aside, and the ring was heavy. It drew Frodo’s neck down, and soon his head was resting against the hard, greasy floor.

“I’ll only rest for a moment,” Frodo said, his voice all but lost beside the wind, which whipped tendrils of poisonous fog against the entrance to their hiding place. “Only for a moment, then you can too Sam, in a moment…”

*

Frodo had dark dreams. They were the only kind he’d had for many, many nights. That was, when he managed to sleep. The ring tired him, but at the same time filled him with manic energy. Everything he could do, nothing was beyond the power of —

His eyes snapped open.

Sam was at the front of the hollow, curled into an uncomfortable ball and shivering in his sleep. He’d tucked both of the Elvish cloaks over Frodo, braving the night on his own. It wasn't cold exactly, but it got into your bones and made you cold just as surely as it got into your throat and made it sore and rough. Frodo watched Sam through bleary eyes for a moment before rousing himself.

With some effort he crept over and laid a cloak-blanket over his friend. Sam twitched and mumbled something about bacon and eggs and sparkling spring cider, but he didn't wake. Frodo fingered the ring around his neck absently with one hand. He was thirsty but there was nothing to drink. He hoped Sam was in a better place in his fantasy: a party with sparkling lights, a table crowded with breakfast, a rushing brook eager to be drank from.

“You shouldn’t have stayed with me,” Frodo whispered to Sam. Then he sat down to be look out. He’d not get back to sleep.

The fog outside was tangled and sinister. Things could come out of that fog; evil and unexpected. There was a noise. A sort of rushing, like air discharged too quickly from a bellows.

Frodo drew Sting. The blade glowed faintly, but that was to be expected. There were many, many Orcs about. The fogs parted slightly as Frodo sprang to his feet, ready to fight. He felt slightly detached from his body and he wondered if he were still asleep. If this were only all a long nightmare that he would awaken from shortly to find himself in his bedroom at Bagend with the sunlight coming through the window and birds chirping merrily, their songs carried daintily on a fragrant breeze.

He'd had such thoughts often since this began, though he’d long dismissed them all as sad fancy. Sadder and more unlikely as time passed and his memories of birds and bedrooms became more faded.

A figure loomed out of the parted mists.

He was tall and dark. Frodo was reminded of Aragorn, but his kingly friend never walked like that: staggering, each step planted firmly as an anchor before taking his next foot off the ground.

“Friend or foe,” asked Frodo, as the man approached, clearly sighting the hobbit's hiding place.

“There’s a question,” the man said. "Hello there. Looks cosy."

He had to duck low to enter. Frodo had his knife at the stranger's throat in an instant, hoping that, were he an enemy — and what else could he be? — the man would not notice how weak he was, how his arm quivered with the effort of holding the blade. Then came the paranoia, because what else could he be after?

With sudden lunatic strength Frodo grabbed onto the man’s arm and twisted it, dug the blade harder against his neck.

“You can’t have it!”

The man laughed. Low, insane, desperate. His Adam’s apple bobbed against Sting’s sharp edge. His face was illuminated by the blade’s phosphorescence: it was like a skull wrapped tight in parchment paper. Stumble of a uniformly unkempt length grew over his cheeks, neck, and scalp. His nose had been recently broken and leaked a trail of congealing red.

“What would I do with that?” he asked. His voice was dismissive, but Frodo was not deceived.

“You want it,” Frodo said.

“'S true,” said the man. “I could do things…” He made a scrambling grab for the ring with his free hand, not heeding the thin cut Sting made when he moved.

“Listen,” he said. His eyes met with Frodo’s and caught them, held them pinned like a butterfly to a board. “I could stop the war…”

“That’s why I have to destroy it,” said Frodo. “You think you can weild it, but you can’t.” He released the man, unable to hold onto him and his own struggle simultaneously. “You can’t. You can’t…”

“Not this war,” said the man. His clothing was torn. The air around him crackled worse than the lightening outside. His head hung low in the cramped quarters and his voice had the same desperate optimism that Sam got.

“I could make it so it never happened,” he said, as if realising the possibility for the first time. “I could force his hands together. Not a big change. Just two strands… It would only take a moment. Just one.”

“I won’t give it to you!” said Frodo.

“I could take it,” said the man.

“But you won’t,” said Frodo. He looked at Sam, who was still, impossibly, sleeping.

“You’re a dream,” Frodo said.

“Am I?” the man asked. He seemed to find this funny.

“Quiet,” said Frodo. “the Orcs will hear you.”

“Thought I was a dream.”

“You are. You must be.”

“I’ve been told that before,” said the man. “That we’re all a dream, and soon the alarm will ring and the dreamer will awake, and where will we go? Does anything we do matter then, if this is all a dream?”

“You came for the ring,” said Frodo.

“I did,” said the man. “I stepped sideways into fiction, because every dream has its harbour. I thought that — but I can’t. I mustn’t. This was a stupid fool venture. I'm an idiot me. It's all my fault you know.”

He was silent for a long time after that, brooding into the night. Frodo studied the lines of his face; the way his shoulders and arms pressed together against his chest. He wasn't hugging himself like that because he was scared of the world, but because he was scared of himself. He was old, the ring said. Old, and powerful.

He didn’t just remind him of Aragorn, Frodo realised with a start, but of Gandolf as well. Frodo wanted to give him the ring — and the ring wanted to be given.

“You’ll succeed,” the man said suddenly, and definitely, and with a dullness that made Frodo fear the win as much as the loss. “I can only hope I’ll be as lucky.”

Then he left. Unfolding himself as he stepped out into the open, vanishing quickly as he walked off into the fog.

*

Frodo woke with two cloaks pulled across his back. Sam sat near the entrance of the hollow, awake, quietly gazing out onto the predatory night. Frodo watched his friend for a long while before his eyelids pulled him back to sleep.  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=31428>


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